Scientific American, November 2007 "30 years of research shows that a focus on effort—not on intelligence or ability—is key to success in school and in life"

When looking into "human motivation—and how people persevere after setbacks. ... a University of Pennsylvania study in the 1960's had shown that after repeated failures, most animals conclude that a situation is hopeless and beyond their control. After such an experience, the researchers found, an animal often remains passive even when it can affect change—a state they called learned helplessness."

"People can learn to be helpless, too, but not everyone reacts to setbacks this way... Why do some students give up when they encounter difficulty, whereas others who are no more skilled continue to strive and learn? One answer, ... lay in people’s beliefs about why they had failed."

"... attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation more than does the belief that lack of effort is to blame... These experiments were an early indication that a focus on effort can help resolve helplessness and engender success."

"Subsequent studies (1970's) revealed that the most persistent students do not ruminate about their own failure much at all but instead think of mistakes as problems to be solved."

"a theory of ... two general classes of learners—helpless versus mastery-oriented... these different types of students not only explain their failures differently, but they also hold different “theories” of intelligence. The helpless ones believe that intelligence is a fixed trait: you have only a certain amount, and that’s that... this a “fixed mind-set.” Mistakes crack their self-confidence because they attribute errors to a lack of ability, which they feel powerless to change. They avoid challenges because challenges make mistakes more likely and looking smart less so... such children shun effort in the belief that having to work hard means they are dumb."

At the end of his life, Henri Mattise, the painter, summed up the reason for his great genius: "Without the hard work, talent is not enough."